Place: Steiermärkische Sparkasse HQ, Graz, Austria
Guests: 64
Mentors: 8
Experts: 5
Idea pitches: 12
Venture teams: 8
End presentations: 9
Nationalities: 4
The first Startup Live Graz!
How come, that we are so amazed at the development of the teams at every event we throw? Shouldn’t we get it by now, that with passion, resilience, awesome participants, mentors and experts teams make immense progress!? The startup scene in Graz, Austria, came in with some of the best new ideas they have – and totally rocked it.
But numbers are what rocks and the development was really interesting: out of 9 teams, 1 died. Sad. But 2 new were born and on Sunday we had 9 pitches anyways! Also, some new ideas that popped up gathered the free members and what hell they will be able to raise will be interesting. The areas were mobile, gaming, biology, gas analysis, biking, navigation, shopping communities (no NOT another bloody Groupon-clone ;) ) and oc web.
Part of our team stayed at the same place as our guests from Prague and Slovenia, getting to know them pretty well. Those guys are great!
As at the last event in Vienna, the founders talk was really interesting. The subject was on the real life of entrepreneurs, an open discussion with 2 winners of Seedcamp from Austria and Slovenia: Lukas Fittl of The Efficient Cloud and the eminent Tomaž Štolfa of vox.io.
The winner was selected by the experts panel consisting of old and new economy, entrepreneurs and experts in the mobile space. This time around, the winner got tickets for STARTUP WEEK 2011, taking place in Vienna in October! The whole team will be able to participate in the whole conference!
Mentor Driven
During the weekend, mentors and experts came by and supported the teams – founders, serial entrepreneurs, experts in marketing, biz modeling, public funding and grants, sales, law and design. As last time around, the mentors got requested by the teams and noted which ones they would be interested in speaking with. The results were many small sessions with several mentors and deep discussions with a few. The input was implemented during the last 24 hours of the event.
Description:
Imagine a Puzzle Game where the earth is the game board and there are hundreds of millions of puzzle pieces made out of the earth surface. The result is a real-world mobile game targeting the question “Can the worldwide smartphone community bring all puzzle pieces of the earth back to its origin just by traveling with the virtual pieces and trading them to other players nearby?”
Moneys? Yeah they thought of that too, don’t worry :) But I don’t know if I can write about that so early in the process.
During Sunday evening we also worked out the initial marketing strategy together. Gonna be great!
BeeABee
Pitcher:
Caroline Augustin
Tagline:
Shop for each other
Description:
Being addicted to Swedish candy myself I totally get the need for this one. A community of international shoppers helping each other get the newest and most localized products. I’d get all the falukorv and gott & blandat I could handle! Rock on! Their strategy is to start small, focusing on a small batch of products in their communications and using the means that are there. Could be fun.
Bike City Guide
Pitcher:
Daniel Kofler and Andreas Stückl
Tagline:
Bike optimized navigation system for touristic city trips
Description:
A mobile app, already working, which offers guided tours for bike trips in touristic areas. They are currently working on point-point-navigation, which should be available in a bit. Shortly before joining Live, their project got accepted to Science Park’s incubation program.
The maps work offline and of course use audio to tell you what you are seeing as you bike around – you shouldn’t be staring at a 7-inch-screen while crossing the street!
Description:
Bernd teamed up with August and what came out was awesome. One of them has been working on isotope identification and is opening up a private research institute in Austria. The other one has developed a portable just-in-time gas analytics device for use by industry, governmental agencies and military. Combine the two? And you get a tool big as a pack of cigarettes, able to tell from which source the cancerogenic gasses are coming from. Not bad at all. Will be exciting to follow this project
Description:
There is an overload of information out there. Forum posts miles long, blog posts of 8k words, sentiments on twitter, facebook and… gah. Sometimes, all you need is a summarized listing of statements split totally black & white into pro and contra.
By using orat.io, this can be achieved.
Bernhard’s end presentation was great, rhetorical and short. In the next month, he will prototype it on a tech level and then gather input from the field. A team will be put together and we’ll see where he takes it from there.
Description:
Finding and sharing adventures. But not just bloody likes of your bungee-jumping, but the whole setup and research, resources and phone numbers, locations and utilities. All you need.
Put the adventure together, share it with friends and find new ones – with and A-Z on what and how to do it.
Next steps: Beta and beta launch event with some pretty damn cool sponsors! All set up. Hope Martin updates us with more info on when/where!
Stenography Project
Pitcher:
Gregor Waltersdorfer
Tagline:
Write like a ninja
Description:
Sadly Gregor had to leave to pick up guests arriving by bike from France, so he didn’t have time to prepare a presentation! So, he did the the hard core way: using his dry humour and voice.
The idea: we are all slow. By using stenography, we’d be up to 66% faster! So, we should all learn it. He intends to implement a smart phone app helping you learn the system of steno, and also a notepad for stenography interpretation – teaching and enabling you to write like a ninja.
We are still waiting for the data on the last pitch, there is one missing. The guys who Gregor had to pick up, from France, also got to pitch their project at the live. Awesome people with the goal to interview school children on their way from Paris to Beijing, doing a documentary on their project. Will tell you more as we have more data :)
We have been working with a number of partners to bring together the startup community of Graz over a weekend. Awesome people! The Gründerservice is the bank to hit if you have questions and need some help in finance, and the Science Park is the academical incubator of Styria, helping students to take their ideas to the market. Konica Minolta we met a few weeks ago, and they jumped on the project! Awesome to see another company getting the fact that a grass root movement of startups is needed!
Vote on HN
Startup Live Graz #1 roundup
Key facts
The first Startup Live Graz!
How come, that we are so amazed at the development of the teams at every event we throw? Shouldn’t we get it by now, that with passion, resilience, awesome participants, mentors and experts teams make immense progress!? The startup scene in Graz, Austria, came in with some of the best new ideas they have – and totally rocked it.
But numbers are what rocks and the development was really interesting: out of 9 teams, 1 died. Sad. But 2 new were born and on Sunday we had 9 pitches anyways! Also, some new ideas that popped up gathered the free members and what hell they will be able to raise will be interesting. The areas were mobile, gaming, biology, gas analysis, biking, navigation, shopping communities (no NOT another bloody Groupon-clone ;) ) and oc web.
Hope to see them again at Startup Live Hagenberg or Vienna!
[/col]
Part of our team stayed at the same place as our guests from Prague and Slovenia, getting to know them pretty well. Those guys are great!
As at the last event in Vienna, the founders talk was really interesting. The subject was on the real life of entrepreneurs, an open discussion with 2 winners of Seedcamp from Austria and Slovenia: Lukas Fittl of The Efficient Cloud and the eminent Tomaž Štolfa of vox.io.
The winner was selected by the experts panel consisting of old and new economy, entrepreneurs and experts in the mobile space. This time around, the winner got tickets for STARTUP WEEK 2011, taking place in Vienna in October! The whole team will be able to participate in the whole conference!
Mentor Driven
During the weekend, mentors and experts came by and supported the teams – founders, serial entrepreneurs, experts in marketing, biz modeling, public funding and grants, sales, law and design. As last time around, the mentors got requested by the teams and noted which ones they would be interested in speaking with. The results were many small sessions with several mentors and deep discussions with a few. The input was implemented during the last 24 hours of the event.
Among them:
- toshl.com
- hvk.at
- railsonfire.com
- The Merger
- soup.io
- efficientcloud.com
- leancanvas.com
- die.socialisten.at
- efficientcloud.com
- vox.io
- Skype
- IPO48
Expert Rated
The guys that decide on which team wins the weekend is always a mix of different disciplines.
On the experts panel of STARTup Live Graz #1 were
Alexis Cukier
CEO and founder of smaxtec-animalcare.com
Bernhard Weber
Business development and coach at the business incubator Science Park Graz
Dagmar Eigner-Stengg
Leader of go-gruendercenter.net, Graz
Marius Starcke
Analyst at The Merger
Daniel Cronin
App marketing at All about apps
Companies and Ideas
Ok enough pla pla, now for what you have all been waiting for! The startups that presented on Sunday evening!
Let’s start with… tam tam tam taaaaaaaaaam… the WINNER!
Christian Haintz, Matthias Musenbrock and Karin Pichler
Recreate the world
Imagine a Puzzle Game where the earth is the game board and there are hundreds of millions of puzzle pieces made out of the earth surface. The result is a real-world mobile game targeting the question “Can the worldwide smartphone community bring all puzzle pieces of the earth back to its origin just by traveling with the virtual pieces and trading them to other players nearby?”
Watch the clip on www.earthpuzzleproject.org to get a clue how this works.
Moneys? Yeah they thought of that too, don’t worry :) But I don’t know if I can write about that so early in the process.
During Sunday evening we also worked out the initial marketing strategy together. Gonna be great!
BeeABee
Caroline Augustin
Shop for each other
Being addicted to Swedish candy myself I totally get the need for this one. A community of international shoppers helping each other get the newest and most localized products. I’d get all the falukorv and gott & blandat I could handle! Rock on! Their strategy is to start small, focusing on a small batch of products in their communications and using the means that are there. Could be fun.
Bike City Guide
Daniel Kofler and Andreas Stückl
Bike optimized navigation system for touristic city trips
A mobile app, already working, which offers guided tours for bike trips in touristic areas. They are currently working on point-point-navigation, which should be available in a bit. Shortly before joining Live, their project got accepted to Science Park’s incubation program.
The maps work offline and of course use audio to tell you what you are seeing as you bike around – you shouldn’t be staring at a 7-inch-screen while crossing the street!
SOREEGA
Bernd Bodiselitsch
in time and smart gas analytics
Bernd teamed up with August and what came out was awesome. One of them has been working on isotope identification and is opening up a private research institute in Austria. The other one has developed a portable just-in-time gas analytics device for use by industry, governmental agencies and military. Combine the two? And you get a tool big as a pack of cigarettes, able to tell from which source the cancerogenic gasses are coming from. Not bad at all. Will be exciting to follow this project
orat.io
Bernhard Hauser
Pro & Contra at first glance
There is an overload of information out there. Forum posts miles long, blog posts of 8k words, sentiments on twitter, facebook and… gah. Sometimes, all you need is a summarized listing of statements split totally black & white into pro and contra.
By using orat.io, this can be achieved.
Bernhard’s end presentation was great, rhetorical and short. In the next month, he will prototype it on a tech level and then gather input from the field. A team will be put together and we’ll see where he takes it from there.
Bilbone
Martin Aichholzer
Inspiring your Leisure Time.
Finding and sharing adventures. But not just bloody likes of your bungee-jumping, but the whole setup and research, resources and phone numbers, locations and utilities. All you need.
Put the adventure together, share it with friends and find new ones – with and A-Z on what and how to do it.
Next steps: Beta and beta launch event with some pretty damn cool sponsors! All set up. Hope Martin updates us with more info on when/where!
Stenography Project
Gregor Waltersdorfer
Write like a ninja
Sadly Gregor had to leave to pick up guests arriving by bike from France, so he didn’t have time to prepare a presentation! So, he did the the hard core way: using his dry humour and voice.
The idea: we are all slow. By using stenography, we’d be up to 66% faster! So, we should all learn it. He intends to implement a smart phone app helping you learn the system of steno, and also a notepad for stenography interpretation – teaching and enabling you to write like a ninja.
We are still waiting for the data on the last pitch, there is one missing. The guys who Gregor had to pick up, from France, also got to pitch their project at the live. Awesome people with the goal to interview school children on their way from Paris to Beijing, doing a documentary on their project. Will tell you more as we have more data :)
So what’s up next? Well, STARTup Live Hagenberg and Vienna of course!
Thanks to our partners
We have been working with a number of partners to bring together the startup community of Graz over a weekend. Awesome people! The Gründerservice is the bank to hit if you have questions and need some help in finance, and the Science Park is the academical incubator of Styria, helping students to take their ideas to the market. Konica Minolta we met a few weeks ago, and they jumped on the project! Awesome to see another company getting the fact that a grass root movement of startups is needed!
Platinum partners
Gold partners